September | 2012 | Drunken Nerdery

August/September 2012 Cartographer’s Guild Lite Challenge Winner!

The challenge was to create two maps on the same image which depicts something before and after an event. The inspiration for my entry came from a documentary I had seen on the History Channel a few months before. Part of it discussed the legend of the ancient desert city of Ubar (which some believe to have been in modern day Oman.) The basic story is that this thriving trading center in the middle of the desert eventually collapsed on itself as the Oasis depleted. (i.e. the water cavity beneath the city which supplied the oasis eventually caved in). When I got into mapping a few weeks later, I kept thinking about how i’d like to eventually recreate the city and adapt the story to the Al-Qadim campaign that I’m running.

My adaptation to the story can be found in the text of the map. The basic gist is that the city was destroyed (by a similar means) as revenge for the ruler’s betrayal of a Genie.

I learned a great deal about Photoshop in doing this map and really benefited from the thoughtful comments and critiques from others on the forum. The Work-In-Progress thread can be found here.

This map is derived from “The Treasure Pit” adventure provided in the “Cities of Bone” 2nd edition source book (by Steve Kurtz). As with my other adaptations of Al-Qadim material, I tried to remain true to the original design but made several structural modifications along with vastly expanding the dungeon dressing. The map was made with CC3 and utilized objects derived from the CSUAC and Dunjinni forums.

The basic story is that our adventurers have stumbled upon the ruins of an ancient fortress. Unbeknownst to them, their guide is a were-hyena who is in the business of luring unsuspecting adventurers into the dungeon so as to make the kill that much easier.